Debates on religious heritage are gaining prominence in the contemporary world amid processes of secularization, diversification and religious revitalization. As dynamics of transnationalization and global migration unsettle inherited understandings of citizenship, nationhood and belonging more broadly, questions of how religions relate to imaginations of national communities are becoming more and more important. In this scenario, processes of negotiation, contestation and reinterpretation of religious pasts take on greater saliency in the public, cultural and political spheres.

The session suggests that these processes feed into new forms of politics of religious heritage redrawing symbolic boundaries around affectively charged cultural cores, and explores how these politics play out in different fields. We welcome contributions examining the framing of religion as heritage in pilgrimage, festivals and religious travels, as well as exploring the notion of religious heritage in the political, legal or cultural domains.

We invite paper proposals related to this topic to be submitted no later than September, 30th 2015. Proposals should use the online form